Sunset Gathering Quilt {Finish}

Hip hip hooray, this quilt is finally done! But alas, it's been nasty weather here and I'm not willing to take it outside in the mud, so indoor pictures it is.

This quilt was part of the Gathering QAL hosted by Cora's Quilts last year. I pulled all of the fabrics from my stash other than the Kona Oyster background fabric -- which is pretty impressive considering this is a queen-sized quilt!

I finished the top in the summer and picked it up from my mom's at Christmas. It sat in a bag for a full month before I was able to trim the quilt and start working on the binding. Speaking of binding:

That's the binding for a queen sized quilt (10 WOF strips, for reference) wrapped around a slightly used spool of Aurifil thread. I have no binding baby and, to be perfectly honest, most of the time I don't press my binding before I sew it to the quilt. Yes, I hear some of you gasping! It was 100% necessary for this quilt and I'm glad I took the time to do it this time around.

For this quilt, I decided to hand stitch it to the back instead of machine binding it. The peachy orange fabric that I used was also used in the quilt top and is an old Kathy Davis print.

This will be my spring bed quilt -- once it warms up and I don't need a flannel quilt on the bed anymore!

Quilt Stats:
Name: Sunset Gathering
Pattern: Gathering by Cora's Quilts
Size: 95" square
Fabrics: various long time stash residents, Kona Oyster for background
Quilting: pantograph clouds
Started: April 2017
Finished: February 2018
Future: bed quilt for myself

Sharing at Finish it up Friday! Don't forget to join our Facebook Group to get a sneak peak of our upcoming quilt along!

Gathering Mystery {Finished Quilt Top}

When last I reported on this quilt, it looked like this:

Since then, I was able to put the entire top together -- hooray! Since my designated quilt holder (husband) has been working crazy hours, I sort of had to finagle these pictures on my own.

This quilt top is queen sized, as you might recall, at a whopping 95 inches square! As such, I will not be adding a border. Here are some closer shots of the "stars" all surrounded by blocks and pieced sashing:

As I noted previously, while really only knowing which fabrics were darks vs. mediums vs. lights in the example quilt, I am quite pleased with how the colors have ended up in my quilt. I think there is good contrast between the colors that neighbor each other.

I also am in full recognition of my limitations, so this quilt will be sent out to a long arm quilter (identity TBD). I am still looking for a long arm quilter in central Maryland, so if you know of one please feel free to leave their contact information in the comments.

As for backing, I will likely use an 108" wide backing just for simplicity, even if the color might not be a perfect match. The darkest green or the black seem like my best choices at the moment.

As of right now, my plan is to use the orange day lily print as my binding since I have the most of that fabric left. I will need nearly two-thirds of a yard of fabric for the binding!

I am also excited to share that the Meadow Mystery QAL Kona specials are now live! The throw bundle contains 4.25 yards of Kona for $26 + flat rate shipping. The queen bundle contains 7 yards of Kona for $42 + flat rate shipping. We are currently offering the bundles in 10 different colors:

Don't delay -- this special will only run until the end of July! If you're interested in a color that we don't currently have listed as part of the bundle special, send us a message on Etsy and we can see what we can do! And if you're not planning to participate in the mystery quilt, feel free to use the sale and stock up on Kona for yourself!

Sharing at Let's Bee Social and Needle and Thread Thursday!

Gathering Mystery {Quilt Top Construction}

I'm not quite done putting together my Cora's Quilts Gathering Mystery QAL top, but I figured I should give a quick update!

I finished putting all of my blocks together for Week 10, which required lots and lots of pins! I only had one that I partially took apart and fixed! I then quickly progressed into sewing the sashing pieces to my blocks, meaning even more pinning! Pinning made the matching nearly perfect and I think thus far I've only taken out part of one sashing + block combo.

And of course then you pair your blocks...

And then you pair your pairs and finish off the row!

Now all four of my block rows are completed! I also completed my horizontal sashing rows. These were much quicker to put together since there wasn't any matching! 

Last night I was able to pin each block row to a sashing row. These are ready to be sewn (and look like almost no easing will be required!) as soon as I can sit down at my machine!

Have a happy Monday! For once, it's not oppressively hot and humid in MD so I am wishing I could be outside!

Sharing at Monday Making, Linky Tuesday, and Let's Bee Social!

Gathering Mystery {Weeks 8 & 9}

I said that I was going to catch up on my Gathering Mystery quilt, and I wasn't joking!

I spent a lot of time chain piecing over the long weekend, and had a lot of ironing to do on Sunday night!

For Week 8, we joined our Week 2 and Week 5 units to make one larger unit. All of the seams lined up quite well and I only had a few that I redid! That's a huge plus in my book.

For Week 9, we made two different units made mainly from our Week 4 and Week 7 units. These went together extremely quickly because there were not any seams to match!

Coming up next: Week 10! We'll be making full blocks and then for Week 11 (the final reveal!) we'll be putting it all together!

Sharing at Let's Bee Social and Needle and Thread Thursday! Don't forget to check out my latest Island Batik Ambassador project!

Gathering Mystery {Weeks 5, 6, & 7}

While it's already time for the Week 10 directions to come out, I'm still a few weeks behind, but have made a dent in my backlog! Over the last week, I've been able to make a lot of progress on making these units and could potentially get caught up this weekend!

For Week 5, our assignment was to make "half snowball units" -- blocks with stitch and flip corners on corners opposite from one another. We made large and small half snowball units. Stitch and flip corners aren't my favorite type of unit but sometimes they are a necessary evil in a pattern! I saved the corner cut-offs from the large units, but not the small units.

I was a little bit worried about the contrast between my corner fabric and center fabric for my larger units, but the blocks turned out well given the prints are so different. For the Queen sized quilt, I had to make 64 of each unit.

For Week 6, we made "house units" which is essentially a half square-in-a-square unit and made 80 units. More stitching and flipping on these units, and I also saved the corner cut-offs from these units as well.

Week 7 was our first week of building bigger blocks -- hooray! We used our two sets of flying geese units from Week 3 and attached them to our house units from Week 6 and to our square in a square units from Week 4. All of these units had precise matching of points, but they actually ended up going together quite well! There are 64 of the units with the green and 80 of the units with the blue!

Here are my two different Week 7 units:

Week 8 and Week 9 are taking the units we've been making in Weeks 2-7 and combining them to make larger block sections. Hopefully these will continue to go together quickly and I'll get all the way caught up before the final week of the quilt along!

Sharing at Finished or not Friday!

Gathering Mystery {Week 4}

Despite the fact that the Week 7 (!!!) directions come out today, I have only just finished Week 4 which seemed to take forever, mainly owing to the fact that I am a crazy person and decided to make the Queen sized quilt.

For Week 4, our assignment was to make two different square-in-a-square units. I had to make 64 of one of the units and 40 of the other. I spent a lot of evenings pressing and trimming dog ears while I watched baseball. And of course, LOTS of chain piecing.

Another thing that took quite a while was meticulously keeping all of my directional prints in the same direction. While it didn't really matter for my blocks on the left because all of the side triangles are my background fabric, the blocks on the right were a different story.

All of the units have the green zig zag fabric going in the same direction as well as the day lily print going from upper left to lower right. That took a bit of planning and made me glad that I didn't cut my green squares into triangles until I knew what I was doing with them.

Even though this was a little fussy, I am EXTREMELY glad that I swapped the green zig zag and the orange day lily from their original assignments in my fabric pull because these units are definitely better as a result. The orange day lily print would have gotten SO chopped up and wouldn't get to shine like it does in these units.

For Week 5 we are making "half snowball units" -- meaning that we're starting with squares and adding stitch and flip corners to two of the four corners. I have all of my diagonal lines drawn on my squares, but I need to just find the time to do the stitching.

For Week 6, we are making "house units" which is essentially a half square-in-a-square unit. I haven't drawn the lines on these fabrics yet.

And of course Week 7 gets published today!

Want to join in with me? Pop on over to Cora's Quilts to find out more! Don't forget to pop on over to my last post to enter to win some yummy Island Batik fabrics!

Gathering Mystery {Weeks 1, 2, & 3}

Because I am a crazy person and can't resist joining in new quilt alongs, I have started working on another quilt as part of the Gathering Mystery QAL hosted by Shelly at Cora's Quilts. I've actually watched from the sidelines for both of her previous mystery quilts and finally decided to jump in myself.

Before we moved, I pulled the fabrics for this project from my stash -- entirely from my stash other than the background fabric -- wahoo! This color scheme is completely different than the example color scheme, but I did actually follow her suggestions for which fabrics were light/medium/dark other than one fabric.

Here are my fabrics other than my background when I pulled them starting at fabric #1 at the bottom, and fabric #8 at the top. My background is Kona Oyster (which you can pick up in the HBD fabric shop on Etsy!)

When the cutting directions came out, I decided to swap the fabrics I had chosen for #3 and #4 because I didn't want to chop up my beautiful day lily print up any smaller than was necessary! I will still likely use that fabric for the binding (because I don't have enough left of my green ziggy print).

I like cutting new projects because I can cut while I watch TV with my husband in the evenings without the sewing machine noise interrupting things. Our week #1 assignment was cutting so that was perfect! Here's everything cut up for other than my background fabric:

Our week #2 sewing assignment was to make a lot of stitch and flip rectangle units using our background fabric and fabric #7 (my dark teal floral). I spent a whole baseball game drawing diagonal lines on my small squares for stitch and flip corners.

Our week #3 assignment was to make two different "flying geese-ish" units using a stitch and flip method. After a few that were a little wonky, I actually zipped through these without having to redo too many! Needless to say I have done a LOT of chain piecing over the last week.

Here's the first two weeks of units, the top row is Units 1a and 1b, and the bottom row is Units 2a and 2b.

Did I mention that I'm making the queen sized version? Those piles have 64 units for 1a, 1b, and 2a, and then I made 80 2b units. I also ended up making a lot of pretty trash! There's still plenty of time to join the party if you're intrigued by my block units! Hop on over to Cora's Quilts to read all about it. :)

Sharing at Let's Bee Social and NTT!